Selected works by Steve Bishop

Christian Dior - Jâ€™Adore (Mountain Goat) and Jean Paul Gaultier â€“ Classique (Arctic Fox) are two of a series of three works. â€śAll three involved copying the form of figurative perfume bottles. I liked that they were a dual image: on one hand itâ€™s a bottle, on the other itâ€™s a figure. I saw the taxidermy and the concrete bottle as two figures melding into each other, and also as two objects overlapping. Taxidermy is as much of an object as a coffee cup or any other thing. But they were white and thereâ€™s an idea of purity involved, and when you see the fur matted and embedded in concrete itâ€™s quite jarring.â€ť

Steve BishopJean-Paul Gaultier - Classique (Arctic Fox)

2008

Taxidermied fox, concrete, paint

147 x 53 x 47 cm (with base)

Bishop conceived these pieces as â€ścontainers for something.â€ť When joined the taxidermy and concrete unite a variety of opposites: soft and hard matter, real and stylised form, nature and construction. By setting one object into another, he literally created an â€śembodimentâ€ť. This idea of a sculpture being both an object and a vessel relates to the history of idolatry, where a form is both a representation and manifestation of its subject.

Steve BishopIt's Hard To Make A Stand

2009

Fur coat, polyurethane, polythene, mirrored acrylic, wood

215 x 196 x 102 cm

â€śItâ€™s Hard To Make A Stand is a more recent work,â€ť says Bishop. â€śI was getting more into using found things and thereâ€™s less of my hand in the making. The horse is made from foam, and the blue sheet is the wrapper it came in. I draped a fur coat over its head and it looks like a dogâ€™s head. Iâ€™m interested in this process of readymade assemblage because itâ€™s more powerful to let something operate by itself. It was really hard to make a base for it â€“ thatâ€™s where the title comes from. The stand has a double bevelled edge as a nod to public sculpture. Itâ€™s like a defaced memorial, like when you see a statue of a soldier on a horse and someoneâ€™s put a traffic cone on its head â€“ what does that gesture stand for?â€ť

Other Resources

a-n magazine
November 2009
Steve Bishop is based in London. His work deals with the complexities of representation. Often making abstractions from popular culture, his work explores the way in which meaning is mediated in an image driven world. Bishop's work engages with the dialectic of desire and value. Using juxtapositions of the profane and the momentous that are characteristic of advertising, Bishop subverts our conflated understanding of beauty and meaning.